Suffocation
by a.e. spencer
Summary: One mistake will cost our favorite spy and her handsome handler everything......


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Title: Suffocation

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Author: Airebella Spencer

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Rating: PG-13

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Feedback: his_gray_eyes@hotmail.com all is welcome :D

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Distribution:Extremely flattering, but I've got one rule: ask first, post later.

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Disclaimer: Let me put it this way…suing me will get you nothing-my name is not JJ Abrams

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Classification: Angst/Romance/an attempt at Action/Adventure

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Summary: My submission for the March Challenge-this is a wacky AU of my own creation, and my first posted fic, so please be nice. All feedback, good or bad, is welcome. I know it's dark, and depressing, but I promise whenever you hear from me next, I'll have something for you dripping with S/V goodness.

The POV changes several times, mostly from Sydney to an unseen narrator, so I hope confusion is minimal…read on! 

"Is my brain small enough?

For you to make me a star?

Give me a toot, I'll sell you my soul,

Pull my strings and I'll go far" ~ The Dead Kennedys

__

Suffocation

She couldn't stand it anymore. The pain and frustration in those silvery gray eyes was enough to dissolve her firm resolve and weakening her poker face into something that resembled an overcooked noodle. With each glance she could feel the tears starting to pool at the corner of her eyes, slowly slinking their way until a shiny glaze blurred her vision.

What she saw in those eyes unleashed every emotion concealed. It made her hate boil through her veins, mingling with the blood and adrenaline. She just wanted to get up and kill somebody. Make somebody suffer the pain that those gray eyes reflected. Make somebody cry out in their sleep and awake with tears flowing from their pale faces, just as those eyes had. 

She'd been passive for way too long.

Somebody had to pay.

----------

Milo Rambaldi was an interesting man. Sydney had always found him to be. She wondered what it would be like to have personally known him. He seemed to be a human puzzle, each new discovery a relevation. 

She often wondered what his social life would have been like.

Would he have been a version of Marshall living in the fifteenth century?

But this last mission they sent her on was insane. Rambaldi was a walking enigma, always something else hidden up his sleeve. The lengths of his genius never failed to amaze her, but how accurate could he really have been? Accurate enough that they sent one of their top agents to retrieve a five hundred year-old manuscript that supposedly contained the equation for an atomic bomb.

Sloane's undying confidence in Rambaldi made the possession of this artifact a must. He said it was "the key" to solve everything, every puzzle, every mystery. It was important, and crucial, that they have this last fragment of faded parchment. 

In the seven years that she'd been tracking all of Rambaldi's works, she thought she could predict him pretty well. 

This _is_ Rambaldi, after all.

It couldn't have been as simple as it sounded. With Rambaldi, nothing was simple.

--------

Their story was theirs alone. It was unique, dangerous, mind-boggling, and almost heartbreaking. The anguish that had filled their lives everyday was something that most people only saw in the rare, unmentionable moments of their lives. Each meeting was bliss, each parting bittersweet. She would long to be rid of them, and each moment with together made her strive harder and harder. 

After all, she always got what she wanted.

Their love had been cursed from the start. Fate had bound them together, intertwining their lives so much that no matter what they tried, they would always be faced with the same truth; every road led them back to each other. The heavens damned their romance.

So they damned the heavens.

They were careful; they were smart. They chose aliases and locations where no one would dream of looking. Their rendezvous were as frequent as possible, as far away from Arvin Sloane and SD-6 and the CIA as one could get. They were consumed by their passion, possessed by their chemistry, kept alive by their love. The love they shared was the only reason she rose in the morning, the only thing that danced in her dreams when her head hit the pillow. 

Even the perfect make mistakes.

But the mistake they made would have enormous consequences. One small impairment of their keen judgement would forever change the course of their lives. If they thought that before they were irreversibly intertwined, then this sealed that fact and dissolved all suspicions. The mistake they made would not only change their lives, but the life of another.

The life they created. 

To most, it would have been a blessing. Many spent thousands of dollars and dozens of years trying to reach the goal they stumbled upon, on accident. Take heart; don't think that our hero and his heroine are made of stone. The child she held within was something they never thought possible, a goal they could never achieve. They weren't supposed to be together. But they were.

The unborn child was never to come into existence. But she did. 

Bright, pink, small and healthy. She was born on her grandmother's estate in Normandy, on one of her mother's retreats following a mission in Paris. The moment was joyous, as most of those moments are, leaving the mother beaming and breathless: the father staring in awe. For three days they remained there peacefully and blissfully, basking in the warm glow of parenthood and the French countryside.

But sadly, here the tale turns sour, as most like these do. They knew that they could never raise this child together, or the way they wanted to, until SD-6 was gone. She would never been safe, growing and thriving in a dangerous world. It was this and this alone that led them to make the hardest decision that either of them would ever make. 

To live without her.

With her father's help, our star crossed lovers fooled their closest of friends, and her boss, into believing that their precious baby girl died just after childbirth. She returned home, with him following in suit, taking time off to grieve for her dead child. Their life continued as normally as possible, and for the next five years they watched their daughter grow and develop without them.

The only time they were together without worry was one date a year. Their daughter's birthday. To everyone else, she made the trip to France in memory, but it was in actuality to give her daughter the love she deserved. Other than that, she only saw her daughter twice a month, whenever a mission led her Europe. Her naïve partner assumed that she only went to pay tribute to the dead child. Little did he know she was showering the five-year-old with kisses instead of sobbing at her grave.

This is where the story begins. It has been seven years since the beginning of them: only five since her. Here the story changes. Here, the fairy tale ends.

-------

Cassia could be said to be the perfect combination of her parents. She had her mother's chestnut curls, her father's lopsided grin, and the dimples that both of her parents had in abundance. She had Sydney's sharp instincts and Vaughn's soothing gaze, gaining her intelligence from both her parents. But the one thing that made her different, what made her unique was her eyes.

Her gray eyes.

She knew they couldn't have been from her side of the family, and Elise Vaughn was positive it didn't come from William Vaughn's lineage. Looking back through the generations of Delormes they found that one of their ancestors, a young woman who'd become the Princess of Wessex after capturing the heart of a pre-Victorian English prince, was the source of those hypnotic silver eyes. 

It was going to be her fifth birthday. Five years of being a part time mother, something she had to be out of necessity. The stress of her work was starting to take its toll on Sydney, and more often than not she found herself in tears while wrapped in the asylum that her bedroom provided. She looked forward to the time she could steal to be with her daughter, to watch her grow and play, to hold her in her arms when she was sound asleep. 

Every year was the same. A private celebration, with Sydney, Vaughn, his mother and siblings, and occasionally her father. This year it would be no different, the party even less: Jack couldn't get the time off, and one of Vaughn's nephews was sick, which wiped out a party of four. 

She had spent the night before in tears, gathered in the arms of her best friend Francie. It was common for her to fall apart emotionally during the few remaining days of May, several days before her departure for France on the first day of June. The tears she cried were tears of happiness, anguish, and sorrow, the guilt of absence from her daughter eating away at her. Through the night her qualms faded: in the morning she was full of excitement underneath that false bravado of grief.

The feeling was still present as she boarded the plane, the butterflies fluttering about in her stomach. According to ritual, she took the pills, sleeping soundly in the seat Sloane had always insisted on paying for. Anticipation fluttered throughout as the plane hovered over the Paris skyline, lit in the dark night. 

Tonight, she'd be in someone's arms again.

----

"Mommy!" a feathery voice exclaimed, a voice belonging to the tall pigtailed child that sprinted towards her. She launched herself into Sydney's arms, burying herself deep into the crook of her neck. Reluctantly, Sydney broke the embrace, lifting her daughter onto her hip as she moved towards the door. 

"Hi there birthday girl," she replied tenderly, responding to the Eskimo kiss Cassia rubbed on her nose. They hurried up the long stone pathway, weaving through the servitors Elise Vaughn had employed. 

The house was large, but they had no trouble finding her. Tall, lean, elegant, leaning against the sweeping mantle of a fireplace on the second floor. Her plain cornsilk hair was pulled away from her face: her eyes were a deep green, darkened by the orange light of the fire. 

"Sydney!" the woman exclaimed, spinning on their entrance.

"Hello Elise," Sydney replied happily, placing her daughter on her feet only to embrace the widowed Mrs. Vaughn. Her skin was smooth, wrinkle-free, her cheeks only blemished by a set of familiar dimples. The embrace they shared was warm, as their greetings always were; her air was comforting, her voice soothing. The older woman smiled tenderly, caressing her granddaughter's cheek as she was lifted back into her mother's arms.

"How was the flight?" she questioned, turning her back to the roaring fireplace.

" It was a nice nap," Sydney replied, rocking Cassia in her arms. The girl had rested her cheek against the curve of her mother's neck, leaning against her chest with her gray eyes hidden underneath her lashes. Brown eyes met green, asking a question that didn't need to be uttered aloud. Elise only nodded with a wink, moving to the large bay windows to pull the heavy drapes shut before she made her way out of the room. 

---

The night quickly faded. The hours that past were full of games and tales of time that mother and daughter were apart. Cassia's energy began to drain out of her, and three hours after Sydney's arrival she was being carried back to her room, clinging tightly to her mother until her head touched the pillow. 

Sydney retreated into her rooms, moving towards the blazing fire that gave her large bedroom a lukewarm temperature. She lost herself in the relaxing glow that sifted through the air around her, not noticing the sound of the shutting door.

The only other thing she noticed were those hands, his hands. His fingers lightly grazed the top of her jaw, following the curve of neck, flowing down her shoulders before tracing the length of her arms down to her fingers. Their fingers instantly interlocked, and with a gentle, strong grip turned her to face him. 

His eyes were tender, his smile warm. He kissed her gently, long, slow and sweet. His hands ran through the silken strands of her hair, delicately sliding down the side of her face as they reluctantly broke apart. His touch was electric as he held her face in his hands, using the pad of his thumb to wipe away the tears that ran slowly down her cheeks. He rested his forehead on hers, placing light kisses on her lips whenever it moved him.

They stood like that for a time, hands intertwined and held parallel to their shoulders. It had always been like this with them; the spark never died. His presence calmed her, and her eyes healed his heartache. 

All they needed was each other.

In an ideal world, this would be true. Food, water, oxygen, everything else would be secondary to them, to the life they wanted, to what they could have. But the world they lived in wasn't ideal. 

It was hell.

So they settled for the same date, once a year, their longing held over by dozens of coincidental meeting while visiting their daughter. A day, an hour, a night, a second. Anything that made their paths cross. 

This time she'd have a week. A week of living in genuine happiness, with sleepy days and long nights free of worry and sorry. 

Their time was slowly running out.

That night they made the most of it.

------

To fully understand this point of the story, one would need to jump into the future. After the young girl's fifth birthday, everything spiraled out of control. Events that would change them forever came to pass, and within a year things were different.

The Delorme estate was nothing but charred ruins mocking the site where a majesty mansion lay nestled into the French countryside. The only things they were able to salvage were a bolt of scarlet drapery and the jagged pieces of a grotesque vase, the convoluted masks of Tragedy and Comedy lining its mouth. Its porcelain was clear ivory and deep navy, the blunt change in color playing with the eye. He had said it was his grandmother's, purchased from a flea market in a small Los Angelean suburb.

Credit Dauphine was nothing but a pile of ash and broken glass. The blood still ran through Arvin Sloane's veins, yet the organization he worked so hard for was almost gone.

Sydney Bristow was nothing but a bittersweet memory.

Michael Vaughn was nothing but a fallen hero.

Cassia Vaughn was nothing but a lie.

----

It had been three years. Three years since everything crumbled. They fled their lives with such haste that heads still spin with shock. 

They were married immediately, the way they had always wanted to be. Just him, her, the preacher, and one witness: the elderly siren from the large village nestled into the base of Mt. Sebacio. 

Their aliases were strangely ironic: their new lives were comfortable and leisurely. She chose their names while she had been "relaxing" at home, engulfed in the familiar plot of one of her mother's old books. It hadn't been as difficult as she expected when she sat Cassia down and explained why she would have to be referred to as Isabella Heathcliff for the remainder of her life.

The name "Catherine" rolled of his tongue: she enjoyed the way his lips curled as the words left his mouth. Unlike his original namesake, they had given him a first name, and Heathcliff would be the name that stuck with the generations to come.

Their lives were simple and rich. They spent their days in the large old manor they came to call their own, frequently visiting the others around them lived there merely for the solitude. They taught "Isabella" in the privacy of their own home, scared of what might happen if she was recognized.

Anyone could recognize her. Especially _them_.

It was one of those nights, after the change. She lay blissfully in his arms, her body perfectly molded to his. She shut her eyes, praying for the sleep that wouldn't come, screaming silently in frustration as she opened her eyes to see the world just as she left it. A feeling of foreboding lurked in her stomach as she twisted in his grip, burying her face in his chest.

Sydney felt him sigh, the rhythm of his heartbeat skipping slightly. From the sound of his heart, she could somehow tell that he was thinking the exact same thing she was. He was on edge, his grip suddenly tensing as they both heard the cry.

"Mommy!" she screamed, her voice loud and blunt. Some nights she called for him; others she called for her. That night they both tensed, shooting up at the same time as she reiterated her call. "Mommy!"

She made the short trip down the hall with Vaughn on her heels. A faint light was switched on as they made their way to the massive bed that held the writhing child, her face soaked in tears. Within seconds, she was in Sydney's arms, cradled in her chest.

Looking into her crying eyes was something that tore the both of them apart. 

She tried. Sydney tried to look into those gray eyes and stay strong. She built up her resolve and made herself swear that she wouldn't cry. She couldn't cry. She had to be strong. Strong for this child, strong for the miracle in her arms, strong for this victim of jealous, revenge, and deceit. 

But the haunting look that stared her straight in the eye broke through the walls of her immunity. She felt her eyes water slightly, and she scolded herself, swallowing her tears and biting down on her teeth. She whispered her apologizes, her eyes stinging as she forced the tears back into their wells. 

"Isabella" 's tears subsided slowly, leaving her weak and unconscious. They tucked her underneath the silken sheets and kissed her forehead, hoping to rid her of the nightmares that plagued her sleep.

Back in their room they molded into each other, burrowing themselves underneath the sheets. Each tried to sleep, but guilt and anger prevented sleep from reaching their eyes. She wanted to kill him: she wanted to march up to the door of that mansion with a loaded gun and empty a clip. He wanted worse for that evil man; he wanted to torture him. To kill everyone important to him in front of his eyes, then slowly watch him waste away. 

Their dreams were different, but their endings were the same.

In both he was dead.

-------

The air was gray, the weather horrid. She could smell a storm on its way, shivering at the abnormally warm winds and the glowing clouds. The four of them, their four, ran about together, spread about long the vast fields of tall grass that grew wildly around their home. 

Isabella had been their first: long gone where the days that Cassia was all she knew. Will had been their second, his eyes deeper than his father's. Jacqueline had been a tribute to her grandfather, and they chose Ely for Vaughn's mother, her memory preserved ever since the days when the fire was fresh in their minds.

It was during days like these that her mind wandered. Back, ten years ago, when their lives were still as normal as they could have been, when things were different. Days like these and glances at the necklace launched her back into days that they would rather forget. 

--

SD-6 was sending her to Paris. Rambaldi's parchment had been found, the mission just as easy as she thought. Sydney smiled to herself as the devil incarnate rambled on and on about a new, pointless mission to retrieve some new intel. She knew that he was taking it easy on her because the days marking the anniversary of Cassia's "death" had just passed, and he knew that her mourning would still be fresh. She was preparing to finish her mission early and pay her daughter a short visit before returning to Dixon and the world of espionage. 

"That'll be all," Sloane replied, shocking her out of her dream world. She plastered a sweet smile on her face before moving to stand. He grabbed her forearm and glanced into her eyes pleadingly, his expression grim. She caught Dixon's eyes and nodded, motioning that she'd meet with him later to go over the details. 

She plopped down into her seat just as the doors shut behind Dixon, biting down the urge to violently scratch the area where his hand had touched her skin. Instead, she turned her attention back to him intently.

"Is something wrong?" Sydney asked curiously, placing her hands into her lap.

An expression of grief flashed through his eyes, settling into the stress lines that had creased on his forehead. "Emily's not doing so well."

"How long?" she asked, her voice slightly lingering. 

"Two weeks. Tops," he answered, sighing. 

"Today?" she inquired, swallowing half of the sentence that wanted to be voiced. He shook his head fervently, understanding exactly what she meant.

"After this mission. She's been asking about you: she knows how hard these past weeks have been for you." She smiled softly, staring blankly at her hands.

"Is that all?"

"Yes." She stood and made her way to the door, drawing herself to a sudden halt with his last words. "And Sydney?"

"Yes?" she asked sweetly, thickly lacing her words to cover up the hate that boiled through her veins.

"Thank you. Go home and relax. Good luck." 

--

The moment she crossed the threshold the phone began to ring. She sighed and dropped her things in a pile and her feet as she raced to catch the phone before the machine did. Something beat them both to the punch. Or someone, rather.

Francie.

"Hello?" her cheerful voice spoke, her back still turned to Sydney. "Joey's Pizza? Sorry honey, wrong number. That's okay. You have a good day too. Bye!" 

"Syd!" she exclaimed, a smile lighting her eyes as she wrapped Sydney in a tight embrace.

"Who was that?" Sydney questioned pointlessly, returning her friend's smile.

"One of our old buddies calling for Joey's Pizza. "

It had been four years since they last got a for "Joey's Pizza." Francie came through and got their number changed, which didn't stop the amount of wrong numbers they got. Vaughn got smarter and changed his calling card, posing as someone calling for 'Conrad's Flowers' or 'Kathy's Bakery'. Each time was different, yet each alias held some sort of significance for them. 

Yet another obstacle was thrown in their way when Francie and Will met Vaughn. Both Devlin and Jack agreed that Sydney could choose to reveal the true identity of her child's father, and if she did choose to, then they would make sure that nothing would impair her status. The night she had taken Vaughn to dinner with them was one nobody would forget, with Francie's playing questioning, Will's jealousy (which diminished after a personal talk with Vaughn), and with the mere fact that they were out in public. Together.

Nevertheless, Francie knew his voice, from that night on. She mentioned briefly to Sydney in the bathroom that the tone of his voice was familiar, but quickly dropped the subject to ramble on about his gorgeous eyes and knee-melting smile. 

Sydney shook out of her reverie as she realized that Francie was waving her hands in front of her blank eyes, yelling her name loudly.

"You know what Fran? Pizza sounds good. I'll go pick some up."

--

He was there when she arrived. He always was. She parked her car next to his evergreen SUV, smiling to herself as she stepped out of the light into the darkness of their warehouse. 

She approached him with the lightest of steps, her feet lighting patting the concrete as she moved closer and closer. He had his back to her, his posture straight underneath the suit he wore, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled into the crook of his elbows. He began to pace the length of their iron cage, stopping only to turn around. By then, she stood right before him.

His lopsided smile made her knees weak. His gaze still made her blush, sending shivers up and down her spine. She found sanctuary then in his arms, returning his gentle kisses, losing herself in the endless depths of her green eyes. She dove into his kiss and took it to another level, only reluctantly pulling herself away when her lungs began to scream for oxygen.

Her countermission, as he said, was simple. Upon her return the disks containing the desired intel would be copied. But there would be just one difference in this information.

This would finish them. For good.

She could tell when she first saw him. There was a renewed hope in his eyes, one that was there in the beginning, when they first found each other. The one that told her every night he was dreaming of the end, and their real beginning. She saw it in his laugh, in his smile, and sometimes she swore that she saw it with every glance into her daughter's gray eyes.

In a way, this mission would be different. The plans would change.

She would be going in alone, using her father as a lifeline. Dixon had been granted an extended vacation after his mother's death followed the serious illness of his youngest daughter. It would be simple, simple enough to do on her own, but timing was critical. Everything would have to be perfect.

With Jack, timing was everything.

So he briefed her on what would happen. It would be an in and out thing. She would rendezvous with her father after the disks were retrieved, copy the disks, and give him the originals.

They would be had delivered to Sloane the day it would be all over.

Sydney left that warehouse reluctantly twenty minutes later feeling giddy. She felt fifteen again, like when she had been asked to prom by the shy, popular senior that she'd had a crush on since she was in junior high. 

She pulled back onto Wilshire with a smile on her face. The pizza had been ordered, and after a brief call to Francie, and then her father, she was on her way home. 

Everything was perfect.

Nothing could go wrong.

But life isn't that forgiving. 

Something went wrong.

--

She ran, her heels in hand, disks tucked safely by her breast. She was not being pursed, or chase; as far as she knew they still thought her name was Marie Periotte. 

The cool night air was exhilarating. She had no need to run, but she did anyway. The adrenaline was still fresh in her veins, and she felt it poisoning her. She began to suffocate as she slowly walked away from the large mansion, her breathing heavy as she politely bid the guards good-bye. As soon as they were small dots in the landscape she began to run, her feet carrying her faster and faster. She felt the air rushing around her, the adrenaline slowly leaking away. Her ears buzzed, her heart pounded, and her coherent thought returned as she remember the conversation she had with Sloane.

__

"The plans are changing," he said to her the night before on the phone. "Dixon may not be returning anytime soon. Your father will be going with you."

She smiled to herself, and wondered how her father had been able to talk Sloane into changing his plans. She shrugged off her doubt and continued her journey on.

She arrived at her hotel in Paris to find her father waiting for her. The stress had etched itself in his face, and slowly began to dissolve away as she came into the room. She handed him the disks, and they performed the exchange wordlessly, their eyes speaking volumes. 

He knew where she was going, but he didn't object. He also knew who was waiting for her.

Neither of them expected the call she got next.

The voice on the other line was strange and unfamiliar. Sydney wrinkled her nose and frowned as the silence made her ears buzz.

"Hello?" she reiterated, the exasperation notable in her voice.

"Be the mother you never knew," the stranger replied.

The line went dead.

__

--

She took her father's keys and drove to Fleury. She was able to condense the three-hour drive down to one and a half, the pit of her stomach churning rapidly with fear. The road was dark, the weather terrible. The sky was bleak, the wind dry, the air humid. The suffocation that had plagued her as she completed her mission had returned, and her breath was reduced to a pattern of uneven, short wheezes.

It seemed to have been an eternity until Sydney pulled up into the gates of the Delorme estate. 

There were no words to describe the horror that had shocked her entire system.

The iron gates before her were pad locked shut; the large mansion before her engulfed in flames. The fire had swallowed the architectural masterpiece, morphing it into a ball of fire that lit the night sky. The landscape around it was burning, the barn, the stables, everything and anything behind the tall wall of brick. 

Her breathing stopped.

Her eyes began to burn, the tears stabbing at them mercilessly. The wheezes that she had restored to use as a method of breathing began to send a bolt of pain up and down her chest. 

Suffocation was better than this.

Anything was.

After she had been able to somewhat recover from the tears, reason hit her. They could have left, both Elise and Cassia. They could have, by some miracle, escaped and made it back into town. They could have gone for help. But part of her knew it wasn't true.

Then she heard something that stopped in her tracks.

She heard her daughter calling out for her.

The cry would haunt her sleep for the next ten years. Sydney could hear her daughter calling out to her from parts unknown, her call faint, defiant, and strong. She followed the noise, reassuring Cassia that Mommy was indeed there and would get her of where ever she was, soon. 

It had taken her about forty-five minutes to finally find her. To find her curled up in a new black overcoat, tucked into the corner of the peeling seat of an old pickup truck. It was oddly familiar to her, with its navy-lined bed and peeling white paint job. She immediately opened the door and pulled the shivering child into her arms.

That night was the first time she saw that look. That look of betrayal, of pain, and sheer horror. Her face was covered in soot, making her eyes dark, sealing the lasting effect they already had on her. She was bawling, both her small fists grasping at something that hung at her neck.

Sydney's eyes bugged as she rolled a thick navy bead between her fingers, tracing over the raised black dots of the crystal stoppers that dotted the stringed necklace. She began to jog her memory, searching for reasons why this necklace had stirred so much emotion in her. Then she remembered.

It had been her mother's.

Grotesque as it might have been, it was very dear to Laura Bristow. According to the ancient anecdote, she had won it one year down in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Supposedly some bar had named her the queen of Mardi Gras, and she had the crown and specter to prove it…and the horrible necklace.

"Grandma!" Cassia screamed, a finger pointed at the blazing house. "Grandma Elle! Help her, Mommy!" Sydney turned and stared at the house blankly.

"Where is she, sweetheart? Where's Grandma Elise?" she questioned desperately, her emotions beginning to blur. The hurting gray eyes before her began to tear as the small finger pointed behind Sydney, to the burning home.

From then on everything faded. She stopped thinking. The colors blurred until they faded into the basic black, white, and gray. She began to move mechanically, calling Vaughn and her father. The story that came out later only cemented the hate she felt for that man. 

He would die, even if she had to kill him herself.

-----

They made her watch. Arvin Sloane had his men tied Cassia down and make her watch as they tortured her grandmother. The horrors she witnessed would be the cause of the nightmares that plagued her well into her teenage years. Exactly what they did to her was something that she wouldn't tell them, but the one thing they were sure of was that it wasn't rape.

Someone had gotten her out safely, given her their coat, and placed her in the trunk where Sydney had found her. When they asked her later, Cassia said it had been a woman.

Who looked exactly like Sydney.

She said the woman had placed the necklace over her head, kissed her forehead, and left briefly before returning. She uttered words in a language that the five-year-old couldn't understand and left. 

From that day on Cassia had been on a crusade. The day she began to learn Russian was the day that they flew to a home in Switzerland to meet Jack. She looked up from the book she was reading, peering curiously at Sydney before pursing her lips and returning her gaze back down to the book in her lap. 

What followed was unexplainable. She unwillingly left her daughter in Vaughn's care and returned to Los Angeles, her and her father's meeting with Sloane scheduled for twelve the afternoon of her return. There was only one obstacle preventing his downfall.

Credit Dauphine no longer existed. All that remained in its wake was death and broken glass.

Credit Dauphine's physical demise was something that puzzled them all. She remembered walking in the daylight towards the towering skyscraper, her eyes squinting in the blinding light. She blinked, and it was there; she blinked once more, and its was crumbling. The next time she opened her eyes the building was crashing down towards her in a shower of metal and ash.

Nobody knew how it happened: only a select few knew why. The only thing that was known for sure was that Sloane hadn't been there when it happened. He made it out, his cowardly heart still beating in his chest.

The shock on Diane Dixon's face when she learned about her husband's death and what he really was would be mirrored numbers of times as she did the Alliance's dirty work.

Nobody would have guessed that Marshall had a son. Nobody would have guessed that their stuttering version of Q had an eight-year-old son who was great with a glove, with a look and a manner completely opposite of that of his father. 

The last call she received as Sydney Bristow was the one that informed her of Emily Sloane's death. Everything else was lost in history.

One thing was certain.

Their dreams came true.


End file.
